Google launches Personal Intelligence in the Gemini app in South Africa

Earlier this year, we introduced Personal Intelligence in the U.S. to show how Gemini can make life easier by learning what matters most to you. Today, we’re officially bringing that personalized experience to our users in South Africa.

Personal Intelligence securely connects information from apps like Gmail and Google Photos to make Gemini uniquely helpful. If you turn it on, you control exactly which apps to link, and each one supercharges the experience. It connects Gmail, Photos, YouTube and Search in a single tap, and we’ve designed the setup to be simple and secure.

Personal Intelligence has two core strengths: reasoning across complex sources and retrieving specific details from, say, an email or photo to answer your question. It often combines these, working across text, photos and video to provide uniquely tailored answers.

In the launch blog, VP of Gemini app, Josh Woodward explains how Personal Intelligence helped him at a tire shop. He needed new tires for his 2019 Honda minivan but standing in line at the shop, he realized he didn't know the tire size. So he asked Gemini. Gemini went further than any other chatbot by not only finding the tire specs, but suggesting different options: one for daily driving and another for all-weather conditions, referencing his family road trips to Oklahoma found in Google Photos. It was also able to pull his license plate number from a picture in Photos and helped him identify the van's specific trim by searching Gmail - saving him a longer search across different apps for this information.

How it works, and our approach to privacy

We built Personal Intelligence with privacy at the center. Connecting your apps is off by default: you choose to turn it on, decide exactly which apps to connect, and can turn it off anytime. When enabled, Gemini accesses your data to answer your specific requests and to do things for you. And because this data already lives at Google securely, you don't have to send sensitive data elsewhere to start personalizing your experience. This is a key differentiator.

You also won’t have to guess where an answer comes from: Gemini will try to reference or explain the information it used from your connected sources so you can verify it. If it doesn’t, you can ask it for more information. And if a response feels off, just correct it on the spot ("Remember, I prefer window seats"). You can also easily regenerate responses without personalization for a particular chat, or use temporary chats to have a conversation without personalization.

We also have guardrails for sensitive topics. Gemini aims to avoid making proactive assumptions about sensitive data like your health, though it will discuss this data with you if you ask.

Our goal is to improve your experience while keeping your data secure and under your control. Built with privacy in mind, Gemini doesn’t train directly on your Gmail inbox or Google Photos library. We train on limited info, like specific prompts in Gemini and the model’s responses, to improve functionality over time.

Here’s what this means in his minivan example. The photos of his road trip, the license plate picture in Photos and the emails in Gmail are not directly used to train the model. They are referenced to deliver the reply. We train the model with things like specific prompts and responses, only after taking steps to filter or obfuscate personal data from the conversation you have with Gemini. In short, we don't train our systems to learn your license plate number; we train them to understand that when you ask for one, we can locate it.

You can read more about our privacy approach here. At any time, you can adjust settings, disconnect Google apps, or delete your chat history.

How you can help us improve

We’ve tested this beta version of Personal Intelligence extensively to minimize mistakes, but we haven't eliminated them. You may encounter inaccurate responses or “over-personalization,” where the model makes connections between unrelated topics. When you see this, please provide feedback by giving the response a “thumbs down.”

Gemini may also struggle with timing or nuance, particularly regarding relationship changes, like divorces, or your various interests. For instance, seeing hundreds of photos of you at a golf course might lead it to assume you love golf. But it misses the nuance: you don’t love golf, but you love your son, and that’s why you’re there. If Gemini gets this wrong, you can just tell it ("I don’t like golf").

These areas and more continue to be under active research and improvement. For a deeper look at our methodology, current limitations, and how we’re working to fix them, read this paper.

How to get Personal Intelligence with Connected Apps

We’re rolling out this experience over the course of the day to personal Google accounts for our eligible Google AI Plus, Pro and Ultra subscribers and we aim to bring it to our free users in the coming weeks. Once enabled, it works across Web, Android and iOS and with all of the models in the Gemini model picker. If you don’t see an invitation to try it on the home screen of Gemini, you can turn it on in Settings by following these instructions:

• Open Gemini and tap Settings
• Tap Personal Intelligence
• Select Connected Apps (Gmail, Photos, etc.)

We look forward to hearing how you use it.